In 1871 the authorities of Baltimore, with a liberality of sentiment and a heartiness of greeting which will be gratefully appreciated by every Templar of the United States, welcome us as guests of their municipality. The Templar Knights throng the city-its houses, streets, and squares, and are received by brethren and citizens with a warmth of fraternal, generous hospitality, unbounded and catholic as the principles of Freemasonry. CHAPTER I SYMBOLISM OF FREEMASONRY Introduction. HE study of Symbols is so closely interwoven with Language that it is essentially necessary, in a treatise on Symbology, that we should begin with an examination into the Origin of language itself; for it is to be presumed that language, or rather speech, was the very first effort of man to make his wishes known to his fellow-man. The habitual use of certain words, applied to the same objects, produced the primitive language. We shall not attempt to follow those who have supposed that language was derived from certain inorganic sounds predicated upon the "utterances of Animals," called "Bow-Wow" theory by Max Müller and others. Now we must remember that it has been clearly proven by distinguished philologists that "the whole of what we call the human mind is realized in language, and in language only. Our next task would be to try to discover the constituent elements of language, and watch, in their development, the true historical development of the human mind."1 It becomes requisite in order fully to understand "symbolisms," as applied to the Ancient Mysteries, the Religions of the World, and also to Speculative Masonry, that we should be more particular in tracing the genealogy of language, from its very commencement, so far as it is possible to do so, by consulting the works of those distinguished writers of the present century, and more particularly within the last quarter of the century now about to close; and inasmuch as on this particular subject of language there is intimately associated that of the mind, which means "thought" and which, again, means "combination," no better work can possibly be referred to than the Science of Thought, by 1 Max Müller, "Science of Thought," vol. i., p. 176. Max Müller in his recent two volumes, which we may constantly quote from wherever in that work we find that his authority will confirm our own ideas. Müller is strictly a "scientist" in whatever line of thought he enters for examination, and upon this very subject he has shown the manner in which we may attain the truth, viz., by the "Constituent Elements of Thought," "Thought and Language," "Constituent Elements of Language," the "Origin of Concepts and Roots." In the proper examination of any individual subject-matter the only true method of examination is by analysis; hence Müller does analyze, so as to show each and every element which enters into the composition of language. He says: "Few words have been used in so many different senses as Thought. I mean by Thought the act of thinking, and by thinking I mean no more than combining. I do not pretend that others have not the right of using Thought in any sense which they prefer, provided only that they will clearly define it. I only wish to explain what is the meaning in which I intend to use the word, and in which I hold it ought to be used. 'I think' means to me the same as the Latin Cogito, namely Co-agito, I bring together,' only with the proviso, that bringing together or combining implies separating, for we cannot combine two or many things without at the same time separating them from all the rest. Hobbes expressed the same truth long ago when he said 'that all our thinking consisted in addition and subtraction."" Humiliating as this may at first sight appear, it is really not more so than that the most subtle and complicated mathematical processes, which to the uninitiated seem beyond all comprehension, can be reduced in the end to addition and subtraction. 'Thinking may not seem so marvellous an achievement as we formerly imagined when we look up with vague admiration to the Mathematical Calculations of Newton, or to the Metaphysical Speculations of Kant; yet if what these thinkers achieved has been achieved by such simple processes as addition and subtraction, combining and separating, their work to the mind becomes in reality far more marvellous than it appeared at first. Much, however, depends on what we combine and separate, and we have therefore to consider what corresponds in thinking to the numbers with which the mathematician operates, what are, in fact, the known quantities |